----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > Could you provide more info on the Ellis, Cooke, and Blythe essays you > mention? Corey Creekmur Gladly. Cooke, Michael. "Naming, Being, and Black Experience." *The Yale Review* 67.2 (1977). Cooke distinguishes between name-calling and name-giving. The former deprives the individual of power, whereas the latter grants power to the individual. Cooke identifies the practice by which young African-Americans "refuse to own their names [and] what was cruelly done to slaves they cheerfully do to themselves." Benston, Kimberly W. "I Yam What I Am: The Topos of Un(naming) in Afro-American Literature." *Black Literature & Literary Theory.* Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York: Methuen, 1984. Kimberly Benston's genealogy of Malcolm Little's last name, would not correspond to Cooke's classification of name giving. He claims that any name that can be used with the title Mister is an instance of name giving, whereas Benston argues that a name like Little relegates a person to the periphery of society. "Malcolm Little, named by the master/father who banished him to his marginal existence, was in some measure the slave his given name signified; he owned nothing." Benston maintains that during emancipation, "self-designation" goes through the process of unnaming via disassociation with one's master. This implies the negation of the Anglo-American past which destroyed the Africans' connections with their ancestors. However, the freed slaves can no longer restore the "African identity that was usurped during Middle Passage." Ellis, Trey. "Remember My Name." *Village Voice* 13 Jun 1989. Gates, Henry Louis Jr. "'What's in a Name?" Some Meanings of Blackness." *Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars." New York: Oxford UP, 1992. Gates indicates how socio-cultural achievements can be traced through linguistic evolution. "My grandfather was colored, my father is Negro and I am black. I wonder if my daughters will identify themselves as "I am African-American." hooks, bell. "To Gloria, Who Is She: On Using a Pseudonym." *Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black.* Boston: South End P, 1989. "I was called nigger so much I thought that was my name." *Malcolm X* (1992), Spike Lee Obviously the *n* word affects some people to a greater degree than others. Gloria Monti